Political Dig

Fox Applied To Air As a News Station In Canada And Were Instantly Denied — Why Are They Allowed In The US?

As America battles for its survival under President Trump’s scandal-ridden administration, Fox News has dedicated most of its airtime to push an alternative reality. designed to protect the fraudulent president from public scrutiny.

The right-wing propaganda network has dedicated most of its airtime to promoting conspiracy theories and flat out lies in an effort to cover up the Trump-Russia scandal and other illegal acts by the administration.

But while the FCC allows Fox to brand itself as a news organization in the United States, Canada has different standards when it comes to broadcast news.

In 2013, Canada passed a law essentially prohibiting lying on broadcast news. And the only major news channel denied permission to broadcast? You guessed it: Fox News.

Canada’s Radio Act requires that “a licenser may not broadcast….any false or misleading news.” The provision has kept Fox News and right wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom. As a result of that law, Canadians enjoy high-quality news coverage including the kind of foreign affairs and investigative journalism that flourished in this country before Ronald Reagan abolished the “Fairness Doctrine” in 1987.

Political dialogue in Canada is marked by civility, modesty, honesty, collegiality, and idealism that have pretty much disappeared on the U.S. airwaves.

When right-wing politician Stephen Harper moved to abolish anti-lying provision of the Radio Act, Canadians rose up to oppose him fearing that their tradition of honest non-partisan news would be replaced by the toxic, overtly partisan, biased and dishonest news coverage familiar to American citizens who listen to Fox News and talk radio.

Harper is known for having mounted a Trump like war on government scientists, data collectors, transparency, and enlightenment in general. He is a wizard of all the familiar tools of demagoguery; false patriotism, bigotry, fear, selfishness and belligerent religiosity.

Harper’s attempts to make lying legal on Canadian television is a stark admission that right wing political ideology can only dominate national debate through dishonest propaganda. Since corporate profit-taking is not an attractive vessel for populism, a political party or broadcast network that makes itself the tool of corporate and financial elites must lie to make its agenda popular with the public.

In the United States, Fox News and talk radio, the sock puppets of billionaires and corporate robber barons have become the masters of propaganda and distortion on the public airwaves. Fox News’s notoriously biased and dishonest coverage of the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections is a prime example of the brand of news coverage Canada has smartly avoided.

How can people possibly believe Fox News is “fair and balanced”? Any research will show that not only is it biased, racist, and homophobic, but it actually lies and falsifies statistics.